Friday, October 23, 2009

Best of the Decade: Music (21-19)

Moving into the Top 20 with the first mentions of some of the decade's signature artists: Jay-Z, M.I.A., the Hold Steady, and TV on the Radio.

21.

Album: The Blueprint — Jay-Z (Roc-a-Fella, 2001)I know a lot of people dote on Jay-Z's first two albums, but I think he peaked with 1999's underrated Vol. 3: The Life and Times of S. Carter and this juggernaut, albums where the energy and hunger of the early stuff meets pop reach, expanding subject matter, and talented young producers (Kanye West here) pulling out all the stops. This is glossy, celebratory, braggadocios modern hip-hop at its most undeniable and ambitious.

Album: Dear Science — TV On the Radio (Interscope, 2008)In the past 10 months, Dear Science has gone from my 18th favorite album of 2008 to my 20th favorite album of the whole decade, so who knows what I'll think a year from now. It gets better every time I listen to it and I think I underrated it initially because I'd struggled with their previous records and it's not generally the kind of record I love. But over time it became clear that this so-called "Williamsburg Radiohead" hadn't created an album of dystopian art-rock but of utopian dance-rock, full of rhythm and joy but with tinges and darkness and noise adding gravity.

"You're pretty good with words, but words won't save your life," a woman advises poet John Berryman on the album-opening "Stuck Between Stations," but songwriter supreme Craig Finn might be singing that line to himself. On Boys and Girls in America, Finn rachets down the verbosity that dominated previous records and gives more conventional song structures (and more conventional singing) a spin. The band also trades in their previous dense conceptualism for something breezier: a theme album about romance amid the kind of messed-up teenage lives chronicled on [2005]'s Separation Sunday. The result is as observant, compassionate, and subtly funny as rock-and-roll gets. Don't be surprised that America's greatest rock band is such a subterranean sensation: With rare exceptions, it's been that way as long as there have been American rock bands.